Month: March 2018

People who claim to not have time for exercise are either not serious about their physical fitness or they simply don’t have the commitment to get in shape. To begin with, you don’t need a humongous amount of time to exercise. Twenty minutes daily is sufficient to get your heart rate up by engaging in high-intensity interval training and there are several of such exercises that you can do right from the comfort of your home.

If you can’t get just twenty minutes every day to work on your physical health, then you should think about the detrimental consequences of having a sedentary life, including not just being inconvenienced in a number of ways, but also predisposing yourself to a myriad of lifestyle diseases, which will cost a lot of time and money to maintain.

If you are wondering how you can find time in to include exercise in your daily schedule, then here are some very vital tips for you-:

You Must Do Away with the Excuses

The first step towards finding time to exercise is to do away with the excuse that you don’t have time to exercise. Getting physically active is dynamic in all aspects and you don’t need to have all the day to yourself or attend a well-equipped gym to be physically fit. There are a lot of exercises you can follow to have very effective home workouts, but you must start by discarding the notion that you are too busy and you don’t have time to exercise.

Wake Up Early

Sleep is important, but so is exercising and staying physically fit. The best time to work out is always in the morning and by just adjusting your wake up time to thirty minutes or one hour before your usual wake up time, you will have ample time to get your heart rate up in the morning and have blood flowing to all parts of your body. Whether you decide to hit the gym that morning or you decide to work out at home, getting up a little bit earlier will ensure you have some time to get physically active.

Cut Down on the Media

Millions of people around the world waste a lot of time on social media, jumping from one platform to another, only to complain later on that they don’t have time to exercise. If you could compute the amount of time wasted on the media, so many people would find more than enough time to exercise and also to engage in other activities.

Instead of wasting all that time in media, restrict your social media time to a certain time of the day, after which you will not check your accounts again until after you have exercised. This will be an effective way to create more time which you can then expend to exercising and other things.

Have a Plan

Finding time to exercise means creating time to exercise and this calls for an elaborate plan on how you will fit the workout into your daily schedule. Begin by evaluating your overall daily schedule and identify the potential time wasters or those periods during the day when you are not very busy.

Find out how much time you can spare and what times of the day so that you can make the necessary adjustments to include exercises in your daily routine. If you do this diligently, you will be surprised at just how much time you have been wasting, and which you could turn into active exercise sessions.

Perform Workout at Home

Most people claim that they don’t have time to exercise simply because they can’t get the time or the money to acquire a gym membership. But it should be abundantly clear to you that you don’t need a fully equipped gym to be exercising on a daily basis. The most important is to increase your activity rate, and luckily enough, there are a thousands of home workouts and home gym equipment available that you can use to get you to the fitness level you desire.

For increasing physical activity rate and overall body workout, nothing can be better than a treadmill and it will cost you even cheaper as compared to most yearly gym memberships. You can choose any among the best buy treadmills to perform cardio workouts at home. After purchasing the treadmill, all you need to do is to change your clothes, play your favorite workout music and jump on it to get started. Believe me, it’s better than sitting on the couch.

If you don’t have the required money or due to some other reasons can’t opt for a treadmill, don’t worry as there are many workouts available online that don’t require any equipment other than you will to work out and your body weight and some require very small spaces, hence, you also don’t need a large room to work out. All you need to do is learn about these home workouts.

Increase Your Level of Activity

Sometimes you don’t have to change into your sweatpants and hit the road running for you to feel that you are doing some meaningful exercise. You can still tap into the full benefits of exercises by increasing your level of activity through the normal things you do on a daily basis. Some of the ways you could do this include-:

Taking your dog for a walk every day for at least one hour.

Walking or jogging to work if it is a manageable distance, instead of using a car or the metro every day.

Using the staircases instead of the elevators or lift when going to upper floors.

Doing small space workouts in the office during breaks such as lunch break or tea break.

Going to the mall and wandering through the shops until you have covered almost all of them.

Have the Commitment

If you think that it is easier and more fun to exercise now compared to when things get out of hand and you are either overweight, obese or struggling with certain lifestyle conditions you could have easily avoided by exercising for just a few minutes every day, then you will get the motivation you need to get physically active.

You must make a conscious decision to commit to your fitness, since without the commitment, even if you were to get the best plan by the most reputable fitness guru in the globe, it will be of no use to you. Be sure to start slowly, then ramp up as you start to see the gains and the benefits of exercising. You can start by working out two or three days a week, but you have to maintain the consistency.

In conclusion, the lack of time should never be a reason for anyone not to exercise. It is a lame excuse given by those who are not committed to their physical fitness. But the good news is that if you know what to do, then you will always create time for exercise in your life. Again, if you get the full realization of the effects of not exercising, you will find the motivation you need to fit exercise into your daily life. The tips given above should get you going and you should never again claim that you have no time for exercise. Work out now and avoid the detrimental effects of sedentary lifestyles that might catch up with you later in life.

Want to gain 10 lbs of extra body fat over the next few months? Of course you don’t, but most people do anyway. From November to January, many people gain 10 lbs or more and triathletes are not immune to this lovely phenomenon.

Why? It’s simple. During the racing season, multi-sport athletes (or some single-sport athletes) can burn upwards of 3000 – 4000 calories per day, depending on age, gender, intensity of training, etc. For most of us, that season is usually from January through October (give or take a few months).

Then boom, we stop training. We don’t become total sloths but we’re in “recovery mode” and we don’t want to do brick workouts or run 10 miles a day, thank you very much.

To top it off, we are told over and over again (by those pesky sports dietitians!) to eat more carbs during the racing/training season, which equals more calories, which equals more energy. What happens to those carbs if we aren’t training and racing? You know the answer to that question, perhaps all too well.

Add to the situation two major holidays that basically center around food (really good food): Thanksgiving and Hanukah or Christmas. Not to mention the New Year’s Eve parties with even more really-good-food and calorie-filled beverages.

The bottom-line: weight gain is easy during the off-season but it doesn’t have to be inevitable. Here are six tips to keep you from going up a size or two during the off-season:

1. Practice mindful-eating. This means paying attention to hunger and satiety cues and heeding them as much as possible. Its ok to indulge in cookies and egg nog a few times but listen to your body and stop when you feel comfortably full (not stuffed). Also, do not eat in front of the TV or computer; its hard to pay attention to fullness cues when you’re glued to a screen.

2. Never go to a holiday party hungry. That’s a recipe for disaster. The food is too tempting and it’s hard to stop eating good food that’s right in front of you when you’re ravenous. Have a small satisfying meal before going to a party to take the edge of your hunger.

3. Put the sport drinks, bars, gels, and gu’s away. Chances are you’re tired of them anyway. But right now you don’t need them and they’re just unnecessary calories (unless you are doing some long runs in which case a few gels are a good idea).

4. Do not skip meals.This only leads to overeating later on (or the next day) and most of the food that is around you during this time is usually high-fat, high-sugar food.

5. Allow yourself your favorite foods but balance them with less calorie-dense foods and physical activity. There’s no way I’m going to pass up mashed potatoes and gravy and pecan pie on Thanksgiving. They’re just too yummy and they’re part of the celebration. But I balance this high-calorie meal by having a smaller meal later on and going for a walk with my family in the evening.

6. Don’t try to lose weight during this time, just focus on staying at the same weight or clothing size. Now is notthe time to try that new diet you’ve been hearing about (diets don’t work anyway but that’s another story). Rather, enjoy this time of rest and renewal; it’s a great time to slow down and reflect on the year behind you. The entire month of December can be a time to rest and rejuvenate. Eat good food but don’t over-indulge. Move your body in comfortable, relaxing ways. Come January, you’ll be ready to rock-n-roll!

This past weekend I rode the San Diego International Triathlon course to better prepare myself for race day. I have done this race many times before, but I always ride the course before each race. Here is one good reason why. I was descending on the downhill portion of the course when I encountered a new and very significant pothole that nearly took me out. It was less visible because the shadows on the road. Note: I was on the course at the same time of day I will be during the race. The race officials may mark this particular pothole and the three others I came upon, but we should never depend on it.

Below is a checklist that may better prepare you for the bike portion of your race.

#1) Check your bike at least two days before the race, so if there is any problems, you can take it to your local bike shop. You want to pay special attention to your breaks, break pads and tires. I like to check all the bolts to make sure they are tight and secure. Check the cables and housing and make sure they are running smooth. Check your chain to make sure you don’t have any bad links. If your not comfortable performing a bike check on your own, bring it in to your local bike shop, and have them do a race tune up. If you bought your bike from a bike shop, they may have included a free lifetime tune up. I always wash my bike and lube my chain before the race.

#2) Read the bike rules to refresh your memory. Check to see if the officials are enforcing certain regulations specific to the race, such as no passing zones.

#3) Ride the course. It is very important to ride the entire course to check for bumps or holes in the road. It also helps you see the level of difficulty of the course. Take note of the start of the bike course. Do you climb out of transition to start the bike portion, or do you have a sharp turn right off the bat? Take note because you will want to put your bike in the appropriate gear before the race. As you come out of T1, you won’t have to mess with the gears or worse, fall on the hill. During the training ride, take note of the gear your in at each portion, especially the hills. Time the climbs, or if you have a computer, log the distance and grade of the climb if you have those features. I like to count my revolutions up a hill to get an idea of how long it is, when I can start to push the climb or get out of the saddle. I like to find landmarks along the climb to help determine when I should be at a moderate to hard effort and when I can attack and hit the crest without too much fatigue. You may find your own system that works best for you. Keep in mind, the better you know the course, the better your performance and the more fun you will have.

#4) Never do anything new on race day. We here that all the time, right? Practicing skills before a race and executing them the best you can on race day is key to a successful and enjoyable day.